1st Sunday after Pentecost Yr C, Trinity

We find ourselves at the time of our church year when it seems like we are completing one thing and embarking upon another. The Sundays of Easter have come to a conclusion, we have celebrated the Day of Pentecost, although we call these days the Days after Pentecost, and we alight for a moment on this, Trinity Sunday, before we come to rest in the ordinary days.

That all sounds so linear, like we can finish up one thing and then begin the next. But you all know that I am not a linear thinker, and therefore in my mind, seasons have a tendency to overlap, or to extend, or to be hurried, but never to happily move in a straight line. The challenge in my life is to be fully present to the now, yes, to look back and see where I’ve been, and to look forward to see what may be off on the horizon, but to let the anxiety of the past and the future be what it is in the present, no more, no less. If I don’t, I will miss incarnation, and I will miss resurrection. In other words, being fully present to now, puts me in a position to see, hear, feel, God in our midst, the reality and the truth of God in you and me and in all of creation. Being fully present helps me to experience the wideness, the boldness, the tenderness, the compassion, of God. It is to be able to listen to God, and to subject myself to God’s authority. If our lives are a narrative, a story that we write with God, then God’s authority is as author, creator.

I do believe being fully present is a good way to experience this thing we call Trinity. The three in One, the One in three. Because Trinity is much more like a dance than a doctrine. Imagine, the God of the universe who creates, who authors, all that is, seen and unseen, who is love, exuberantly spilling over into what we call son and spirit. God being with creation, in the midst of creation, continuing to create, loving, healing, reconciling, speaking, writing the story. So how do we talk about Trinity?

Here is an example. I really love being a mother. Motherhood has changed for me these days. Our boys have grown up and are in various stages of taking steps away to lives on their own. I love to watch Tom and Willie grow and deepen. Deepen in character, faith, expression and relationship. As their mother my heart breaks when they are in pain, and my heart soars when joy finds them. As their mother, I try to prepare them and support them both in their successes and their mistakes. My greatest hope is that they will grow into the full stature of Christ.

Being a daughter these days is hard. I miss my mother, and there are still days that I miss my father, who died sixteen years ago last week. My mother, who is the mother of eight children, never missed a band concert, or a swimming meet. She lived through my boyfriends and bad judgments. When I was 23, I went by myself on a 6 month trip to Europe, only now do I begin to realize what I must have put her through. And she helped take care of Tom and Willie when they were younger.

And then there’s being me. A woman who is creative, passionate, stubborn, compassionate, controlling, has good judgment sometimes not so good judgment once in a while, wife, priest.

All of these, mother, daughter, wife, are always in relationship. Nothing I do, or think, or am, can be separated from the rest. I bring to this present moment all that I am, all that I have been, and all that I am becoming. It is the story that I write with God, while responding the joys and challenges life presents.

If that’s not Trinity, I don’t know what is. Trinity is at its essence relationship. It is relationship among what is, what was, and what shall be. It is relationship among creator, created, and community. Trinity is lover, beloved, and new life.

I remember so very clearly the Sunday night youth group that the priest came to, to explain to us teenagers everything we ever wanted to know about the Trinity. I remember nothing else about that night, except that I left as confused as I had come.

Today I know that that is because understanding Trinity isn’t an exercise of the intellect. Nor is Trinity to be described adequately by our language, because Trinity does not dwell in the world of language. I think efforts to construct Trinity are woefully inadequate. Even the Nicene creed that we all recite by memory each week, which was compiled by men who tried desperately to describe what Trinity is not, only is a glimpse of what may be true. Because the real truth of Trinity lives in that part of us that is intuitive and relational. Trinity exists in the part of our humanity that yearns to be in relationship, that yearns to dance.

Theologians have written tomes about Trinity, I write only this. Trinity is the truth we find in the God who loves us so much to come into our lives as one of us, to be forever among us and forever before us. Trinity is the way in which our lives are lived in relationship, relationship that makes real the body of Christ. And Trinity is the life that is made absolutely new through our creator God.

One of my favorite hymns goes like this. “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the trinity, by invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three. I bind this day to me forever, by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation…. I bind unto myself the power of the great love of cherubim…..I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven… I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead.” We call upon the authority of the one who is creator, the one who created, and the one who gives new life.

We must bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity. We must bind ourselves each and every day to the chance for new life given to us and written for us by our Creator.

I had the great privilege once to spend a week at Kanuga conference center in the mountains in North Carolina, to listen to my favorite author Madeleine L’engle speak about this and that. She talks and writes about leaving her apartment in New York City and walking the few blocks to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where she was writer in residence, and that she would recite this rune, as it is called and was before we knew it as a hymn, “I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three.”

We must bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity, to the authority that creates us, redeems us, and makes us new creations. We must be fully present to Trinity, to the relationship that enfolds us, empowers us, gives us new life, and calls us from darkness to light, brokenness to wholeness.

In the name of the one who is creator, who is redeemer, and who is sustainer of all life, In the name of the one who is father, son and spirit, In the name of the one who is mother, daughter and compassion, be present to the power that protects you, guides you, and gives you new life.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God: Come let us adore him.